Maharashtra's Onion Price Drop Sparks Big Face-Off In Assembly

Ndtv | 3 months ago | 28-02-2023 | 09:25 pm

NCP MLAs staging a protest at the assembly wearing garland of onions.Mumbai: The Maharashtra assembly today witnessed chaos over the falling onion prices and was adjourned for the day amid an uproar by the Opposition members.The Opposition MLAs demanded a discussion on the farmers' issue in the assembly after Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis announced in the Legislative Council the state government was ready to provide grant to the onion producers.Mr Fadnavis said the government is taking all measures to provide relief to the onion farmers by buying their produce.Following two brief adjournments, the House was adjourned for the day amid Opposition uproar.Meanwhile, Nationalist Congress Party MLAs staged a protest at the Maharashtra assembly wearing garland of onions.The assembly protests come a day after the farmers stopped the auction at Asia's biggest onion market in Nashik district due to the falling prices. The protest at the Lasalgaon mandi in Nashik was called off in the evening following an assurance by a state minister.BJP MLA Ram Kadam alleged that the protesting farmers were actually Congress and NCP workers.Congress state chief Nana Patole accused the government of being anti-farmers. "If they are Congress workers, will you not help the farmers who support the Congress," he responded to Mr Kadam's allegations.The wholesale prices of onions, which had been on a constant decline in the state, fell from Rs 4 to Rs 2 per kg yesterday, angering the farmers.The onion growers have demanded an immediate grant of Rs 1,500 per quintal of onions and that the government buy their produce at Rs 15-20 per kg. Else, they would not let the auction resume at the mandi, said a representative.PromotedListen to the latest songs, only on JioSaavn.comBut the onions fetched a minimum price of Rs 200 per quintal (Rs 2/kg) as soon as the auction opened for the week yesterday. The maximum was Rs 800 per quintal with the average being around Rs 400-450 per quintal.Angered by this, the farmers had stopped the auction and staged a protest.

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Eye on LS polls, BJP reaches out to former allies Premium Story

The Indian Express | 18 hours ago | 09-06-2023 | 12:45 pm

The Indian Express

18 hours ago | 09-06-2023 | 12:45 pm

As the Opposition parties step up to build a united platform against the ruling BJP for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the saffron party has returned to kickstart talks with its erstwhile allies in a bid to breathe a new life into the NDA, even as the party has sought to firm up ties with its existing partners.Its rout in the recent Karnataka Assembly polls coupled with the rapidly-changing political situation seems to have forced the BJP to shed its tough stance against ex-partners that walked out of the party-led NDA on a sour note. Clearly, the party is again looking to stitch up a formidable coalition for the next general election.BJP sources said the party leadership has already resumed alliance talks with the Janata Dal (Secular) in Karnataka, Telugu Desam Party (TDP) in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, and the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) in Punjab. The BJP top brass has also reaffirmed the party’s ties with the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena in Maharashtra and the AIADMK in Tamil Nadu. Also, it will soon meet and hold discussions with smaller allies in other states, including Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, sources said.In a recent meeting with the BJP Chief Ministers and Deputy CMs in Delhi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi was said to have advised the BJP to be open to accommodate the regional parties by forging ties with them.A number of BJP leaders have admitted that the exit of parties like the TDP, Uddhav Sena, SAD and JD(U) from the NDA over the years has given the party an image in public that it does not want to accept regional parties that are formidable forces in their respective states. Its friendly parties – the YSRCP in Andhra Pradesh or the BJD in Odisha – had not been ready for a formal alliance while remaining unwilling to be a part of the party-led government at the Centre.According to sources, the BJP leadership has decided to keep aside its disenchantment with the SAD, which quit the NDA over the now-repealed contentious farm laws, after evaluating the Jalandhar Lok Sabha bypoll outcome.The May by-election to the Jalandhar Lok Sabha seat, a traditional Congress bastion, was won by the AAP with 34.1 per cent votes while the SAD and the BJP candidates, respectively, got 17.9 per cent and 15.2 per cent votes. “The fact that the votes won by the BJP and the SAD almost equalled the votes the winning AAP candidate got has made the leadership review its stance. The BJP is a party that drops hard or adamant positions if it is necessary for electoral wins,” said a party leader who is familiar with developments in the Punjab unit.After its decimation in the Punjab polls last year, the SAD – it could win only three seats in the 117-member state Assembly – was keen on returning to the NDA fold, said the leader. The BJP had then fought the election in a coalition with smaller parties, including the ex-Congress CM Capt Amarinder Singh-led Punjab Lok Congress, managing to win only two seats.Although the JD (S) was interested in a pre-poll alliance with the BJP in the Karnataka elections, the BJP did not go for it in a “strategic move” to let the regional party keep its Vokkaliga-Muslim support base, according to BJP sources. However, the BJP was disappointed with the “surprising drop in its vote share” in the elections. “For the Lok Sabha elections, it makes sense for both the parties to forge a formal alliance as the JD(S) does not have much hope to regain its minority votes in the near future,” said a BJP leader.Some recent statements from the JD(S) leaders, including ex-prime minister H D Deve Gowda’s praise for Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw for his handling of the Balasore triple-train disaster, indicate that there could be a tie-up between the two parties for the 2024 polls. In the wake of the Congress’s spectacular victory in the state elections, the BJP is keen to consolidate the Vokkaliga votes in its favour, sources said.The Karnataka lessons also appear to have pushed the BJP into resuming coalition talks with TDP chief N Chandrababu Naidu. Although Naidu had made several attempts for a thaw in their ties earlier too, the BJP leadership was then reluctant, primarily due to vehement resistance from its state unit. Last week, however, Naidu met top BJP leaders, Union Home Minister Amit Shah and party national president J P Nadda, with both sides apparently agreeing to work together in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.With several crucial state elections lined up later this year in which it will face off the Congress directly, the BJP’s current focus has turned to curbing the re-emergence of the Congress in these states.While Naidu is keen on forging an alliance with the BJP to mount a bid to return to power in Andhra Pradesh by ousting the incumbent Jagan Mohan Reddy-led YSRCP from power, the BJP is looking to secure its position as the most potent alternative force in Telangana. In both these states, the BJP wants to restrict the Congress to a distant third position or push it to the margins.After a hiatus in Maharashtra, the BJP leadership sent out fresh conciliatory signals to the Shinde Sena earlier this month, sources said. Both the allies share power in the state government led by CM Shinde, whose party has also been demanding berths in the Union Cabinet for its MPs who have extended support to the BJP in Parliament. Sources said fresh moves are afoot in the government to explore any possible changes in the Union Cabinet in order to create space for some alliance partners and new faces.Shinde along with Deputy CM and senior BJP leader Devendra Fadnavis met Shah earlier this week in the national capital, following which the CM announced that both the allies will contest all future elections in the state together. “During the meeting, it was decided that all future elections (including the Lok Sabha, Assembly and civic bodies) will be contested jointly by the Shiv Sena and BJP. We will contest and win the elections with a majority,” he tweeted.The BJP is expected to launch fresh efforts to strengthen its ties with the Apna Dal in UP, even as it would explore partnership with other smaller parties in both UP and Bihar.

Manipur crisis reveals the limits of BJP's politics in the Northeast

The Indian Express | 18 hours ago | 09-06-2023 | 12:45 pm

The Indian Express

18 hours ago | 09-06-2023 | 12:45 pm

The continuing violence in Manipur ought to be shocking for many reasons. But its sheer scale, endurance and brutality is still not getting national attention. As is typical, the prime minister who is never shy of taking leadership credit, is completely absent when there is an actual crisis that goes to the heart of both constitutional values and national security. In this instance, it seems like the double-engine sarkar, even after invoking Article 355, is unable to control the violence.It takes nothing away from the culpability of the present dispensation to acknowledge the long-standing and irresolvable contradictions of Manipur politics. Whenever the central organising axis of politics is a distributive conflict between identity-based groups, there is a high chance of violence. This is particularly the case where the conflict inherently has the character of a zero-sum game. In Manipur, the politics of distribution between Kukis and Meiteis turns on four goods whose inherent logic is zero-sum.The first is inclusion in the ST quota which is the proximate background to the current conflict. By its very nature, the inclusion of more groups in the ST quota will be a threat to existing beneficiaries. The second is land, and the tension between the valley and the hills. This is also a zero-sum resource, where protecting the land rights of Kukis is seen as foreclosing the opportunities for other groups. The third is political representation, where historically Kukis have felt dominated by the Meiteis. The fourth is patronage by the state in the informal economy, in which groups compete against one another for control of informal trade. Each state intervention in regulating trade becomes a locus of conflict.Place on top of that a default demand that the boundaries of ethnicity and territorial governance should, as much as possible, coincide. In principle, these demands could be negotiated through building inclusive democratic institutions. But this is easier said than done, when every policy instrument in contention — quotas, land, representation, and the state-economy nexus — are defined in terms of zero-sum games. The tragedy of Manipur was that, in part, there was no other game in town, one that could prise politics away from this zero-sum alignment of distribution and ethnicity.Dealing with such a situation requires at least three things. It requires a capable state impartially enforcing constitutional values. It requires a political culture that respects identity but does not politicise it. It requires a development narrative that all sections of society can potentially participate in.Instead, the Indian state made Manipur a charnel house of human rights violations, abetted violence and militarisation to unprecedented levels. It opportunistically used ethnicity both for electoral alliances and divide and rule. In some ways, under colonial divide and rule, the state pretended to hover above the various contending groups. The point of divide and rule was to present the state as neutral and shore up its legitimacy. But in democratic India divide and rule has meant the state itself getting implicated with one group or the other. The result was a weakening of the state’s capacity to govern. We can see the long-term effects of this even in the present crisis, where there is widespread agreement that the state security forces and police cannot be trusted to be neutral and impartial. This creates a vicious cycle where all ethnic groups feel the need to preemptively protect themselves. And finally, the state was not a neutral actor in the economy.It is worth remembering this structural contradiction when we diagnose the present moment. The politics of majoritarianism in Manipur was always more complicated. It was this history that had first given the BJP an opening, where the Congress was seen as an instrument of the Valley, so much so that the Kukis called for supporting the BJP. But the current dispensation, rather than seizing the opportunity to create a new politics, has made the same mistakes. Only this time, the consequences are even more tragic and irrevocable.The violence has given a lie to the BJP’s project in three senses. The first is that the BJP can build a capable law and order state. In this instance, that state has proven to be both deeply incompetent and partisan. The ease with which literally thousands of weapons have been looted would shame any half capable state. But more disturbingly, the pattern that the state is seen to be a partisan actor in the violence continues unabated. Second, it exposes the ideological dangers of the BJP’s project.The BJP tried for a brief moment to run with the hare and hunt with the hound. It tried to capitalise on Kuki construal of Congress in Manipur as majoritarian at the same time as it politicised and promoted Meitei identity. Now that contradiction has burst open: A visible demonstration of the limits of Hindutva accommodation. Contingently convenient alliances will, in the end, be overrun by the ideological juggernaut. And third, it has shown that the BJP’s political instincts can be overrated: Its capacity to negotiate complicated social fissures in the North-east has been overestimated. What the BJP had touted as the moment of its greatest ideological triumph, winning in the North-east, is turning out to also expose the limitations of its politics.It is not going to be easy for Manipur to recover from this violence. There are no credible public institutions that can hold perpetrators of violence to account, impartially. The nature of the violence is such that both the Kukis and Meiteis will be left with a deep sense of victimhood. But there is a deeper question: Is there any political force left in the state that can do the job of political mediation? In a situation where, singly, all parties are considered partisan, the only possibility would be an all-party mediation, one that tries to lift Manipur out of a fatal combination of zero-sum identity politics. But such imaginative gestures are now beyond our ruling establishment.When I first read journalist Sudeep Chakravarti’s book, “The Eastern Gate”, one line stood out. He recounts a visit to Churachandpur, ground zero of the current violence, where he sees a sign by a church: “There is a way that seems right to a man, but it ends in death.” Alas, these words seem all too prophetic at the moment, when no one is prepared to break the mould of politics in Manipur. Nero will, of course, continue to fiddle, while Manipur burns.The writer is contributing editor, The Indian Express

Message to NRIs: Rahul Gandhi demonises past, Modi needs more for future

The Indian Express | 1 day ago | 08-06-2023 | 12:45 pm

The Indian Express

1 day ago | 08-06-2023 | 12:45 pm

Rahul Gandhi’s tour of the US centred on words like love and affection. He invoked Gandhi. And Buddha, Guru Nanak, Basava and Ambedkar. He certainly appeared peaceful in his speeches. Even when he criticised his opponents, he did not betray anger. His focus was on the future.His opponents’ attention though, he insisted, was on the past. Mahatma Gandhi’s assassin Nathuram Godse, he claimed, was obsessed about going back to the past and really just very angry about himself. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the BJP, and RSS too, are all, according to Rahul Gandhi, obsessed with the past. Like driving while looking entirely at the rear-view mirror, he said. Like blaming the past Congress government when confronted with a heartbreaking tragedy like the massive train accident in Odisha. The packed audience in New York appeared to erupt in laughter at that jibe.But it wasn’t just the recent past that was diagnosed as a problem. Rahul Gandhi’s adviser, Sam Pitroda, listed Ram, Hanuman, and temples as examples of an unproductive obsession with the past.What I would like to debate here is not whether Pitroda was being Hinduphobic as some channels have charged, or if Rahul Gandhi was being dishonest about historical facts, but the capture of discourse, imagination, and ultimately lived experience by a certain kind of propaganda about time. Propaganda in this context is not just about facts, but also about our relationship with each other in time, with generational continuity.This too was implicitly a problem for Rahul Gandhi. If India’s (Hindu) past was a problem, India’s future seemed to require its erasure. Showering praise on NRIs, he said that the reason they were successful here was because they adopted American customs, that they (at least his supporters), were assimilated.You do well here because you left the past behind and India isn’t doing well because they are not leaving the past behind. That seems to be the gist of it.One can debate the past, but to directly demonise one’s ancestral bonds, affections, and memories is dangerous terrain, examples of which are many in colonial history. (The experience of Native American children in the forced boarding schools being perhaps the most tragic one.)There is, however, another aspect to the role of propaganda in breaking intergenerational ties. Modern totalitarian ideologies and monotheistic religions have relied not only on demonising the past as “savage” or “primitive” but also on usurping for themselves a monopoly on intergenerational transmission.In the South Asian context, there is a telling example for the Rahul Gandhi-Pitroda school from Venkat Dhulipala’s masterful study, Creating a New Medina. In the pre-Partition days, it was not the RSS’s idea of the past that provoked opposition from the Muslim League but the inclusive Gandhian ideals of the Wardha Scheme instead. The Muslim League’s Pirpur report argued that the Wardha Scheme would bring in “Gandhian totalitarianism” and subject Muslim children to brainwashing akin to Stalin’s USSR and Mussolini’s Italy.Intergenerational cultural reproduction was clearly a priority for the Muslim League and it won its ground (incidentally, Dhulipala’s discussion about the Madras Muslim League and its demand for “Moplahstan” is also relevant now given Rahul Gandhi’s confident assertion that the Muslim League was a secular party).Given this history, one wonders if Rahul Gandhi and Sam Pitroda’s positing of the past as a master trope in their diaspora campaign comes from a place of fresh thinking (let alone love), and given the rather obvious anti-Hindu wolf-whistling, who their ideological audience really is.As for the event’s possible impact, there are a couple of things to consider. On the one hand, it might be the case that more people in America watched The Kerala Story last weekend than Rahul Gandhi, and that should tell his campaign something. On the other, even if the numbers are with Modi, the fact that many US institutions including universities and their South Asia Studies programmes seem to share the Gandhi-Pitroda view of the Hindu past, might well prove to be a leveller in the long run.Finally, one might also consider Prime Minister Modi’s spectacular stadium events in the diaspora. I asked my Twitter followers if they saw benefits for NRIs from these events. Some people said that Modi’s visits had brought real policy changes. Others shared the warmth and joy they felt there. One critic, though, said that instead of “showing a stand” (on matters of importance to the diaspora), the PM’s speeches merely put on “a show for the stands”.One can attest to all of these, and wonder for how long these feel-good speeches about famous local mithai can fill in for the absence of a real vision that bridges the promised future and the forever kept on opportunistic half-boil past.In the diaspora, the intergenerational fall-out of this ineptitude has been intense. In the past nine years, many parents who cheered for the leader of their dreams lost the respect of their children by failing to engage in an informed debate with them, especially on the Trump-Modi spectacle. Such parents blame liberal arts professors instead of their own political culture.Ultimately, whether one is in India or the diaspora, or supports the BJP or Congress, there is a bigger issue our polarised times distract us from. The problem of propaganda isn’t specific to one side. At an intragenerational level, we might even ride it out in our lifetimes. But at an inter-generational level, the consequences will be devastating. New technologies, coupled with old ideologies (and some old but enduring dynasties), are going to create a sea of lost adults with neither a past nor a future to draw strength from.The writer is professor of media studies at the University of San Francisco

Amid Gehlot-Shekhawat tussle, Congress gets a warning signal from Rajput body before polls

The Indian Express | 2 days ago | 07-06-2023 | 12:45 pm

The Indian Express

2 days ago | 07-06-2023 | 12:45 pm

The conflict between Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot and Union Jal Shakti Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat is likely to intensify, even as the Pratap Foundation, a major body of the Rajput community to which Shekhawat belongs, issued a statement Monday accusing Gehlot of targeting a “rising Rajput leader”.Gehlot has consistently attacked Shekhawat over his alleged involvement in the Sanjivani Credit Co-operative Society scam. The Union Minister has denied such allegations, saying that Gehlot’s statements stemmed from “political vendetta” since he had defeated the CM’s son, Vaibhav Gehlot, in Jodhpur in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.At a function on June 2, Gehlot kept up his attack, saying: “I called up Bhagwan Singh Rolsahabsar who is his (Shekhawat’s) guru (and head of the Kshatriya Yuvak Sangh). I called that good man and said ‘Bhagwan Singh ji, this chela (disciple) of yours, people are sinking because of him, please help the people get back their money.’ There may be some compulsions because of which he is not able to do anything.”The CM went on to add that the public should speak up “about the money which has sunk” and asked “why the Enforcement Directorate (ED) was not probing the case”.The Pratap Foundation, which is associated with the Kshatriya Yuvak Sangh, the apex Rajput body in Rajasthan, went on to shoot off a three-page letter to Gehlot on June 5, slamming the CM for some of his recent comments mentioning Rolsahabsar. Unlike other Rajput outfits such as the Karni Sena, the Kshatriya Yuvak Sangh, which was founded by former MP Tan Singh, says it does not involve itself in politics.The letter to Gehlot from senior Pratap Foundation member Mahaveer Singh Sarvadi states: “You are the CM of the state. Making such baseless statements by involving the name of Shree Bhagwan Singh Sahab is not dignified behaviour on your behalf. Please make this point suitable for consideration. Honourable Bhagwan Singh ji cannot be a part of any personal motives in the arena of politics.”Backing Shekhawat in the Sanjivani case, the letter claims, “Many cases such as Sanjivani happen in the state. Despite that, one politician is speaking rubbish against another politician by raking up the Sanjivani case. The common public is understanding everything…The investigation in Sanjivani case has been kept open for the past four years. Character assassination of our community’s rising leader Gajendra Singh Shekhawat cannot be done.”In his reaction to the letter, Gehlot told reports Tuesday, “I had spoken about Bhagwan Singh Rolsahabsar and I got a letter today from his organisation about why I took his name. I am taking his name after respecting him that he (Shekhawat) will listen to him because he (Shekhawat) has been a disciple of him (Rolsahabsar). The poor will benefit. Bhagwan Singh ji always talks about the benefit of the poor. What wrong have I said.”Sarvadi told The Indian Express: “After the CM’s recent statement, I had spoken to people of our community. They think that because of political reasons, CM Gehlot is targeting Gajendra Singh Shekhawat. There is a lot of anger in the community which led us to write the letter.”The significance of the Kshatriya Yuvak Sangh in Rajasthan’s politics could be gauged from an event it held in 2021, held to celebrate its 75th year, when a slew of leaders and legislators across party lines had participated in the programme.All the major Rajput leaders in the state – Shekhawat, BJP leader of Opposition Rajendra Rathore, Rajasthan Cabinet Minister Pratap Singh Khachariyawas and Congress leader Dharmendra Rathore – spoke at that event.The Rajput community has traditionally been a BJP support base. At the time of the 2018 Lok Sabha elections, however, the Congress managed to capitalise on the community’s discontent with the saffron party owing to issues such as the encounter of gangster Anandpal Singh and the sidelining of senior leaders such as Jaswant Singh during the tenure of former CM Vasundhara Raje. But the Pratap Foundation’s criticism, coming ahead of the Assembly elections slated for December, might not be a positive sign for the party.

BJP’s Mali outreach before polls boomerangs, absent Gehlot has last laugh

The Indian Express | 3 days ago | 06-06-2023 | 12:45 pm

The Indian Express

3 days ago | 06-06-2023 | 12:45 pm

Just as Uttar Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister and BJP leader Keshav Prasad Maurya started his speech at the Mali Mahasangam held in Jaipur on Sunday, many members of the community – to which Rajasthan CM and senior Congress leader Ashok Gehlot also belongs – in the audience started betraying their allegiance.“In 2018 (Rajasthan Assembly polls), the BJP gave (Malis) six tickets while the Congress gave four. If there is no infighting (within the community), I am sure we will get 20 tickets (in upcoming Assembly polls),” Maurya told the gathering of the Mali community, which is among the Other Backward Classes (OBCs).But Maurya’s speech was soon interrupted with slogans of “Ashok Gehlot zindabad” raised by the gathering, which caught both the BJP leaders present on the stage as well as the event’s organisers off their guard.The audience started sloganeering in support of Gehlot so vigorously that the organisers had to repeatedly appeal to them that it was a community programme that should not be turned into a political function.The development again signalled the primacy of Gehlot’s leadership among Malis and related communities like Saini, Maurya, Kushwaha and Shakya in Rajasthan, even as only three MLAs, including the CM, of the state’s total 200 MLAs belong to these communities.Malis held the mahasangam or mahapanchayat to demand 12 per cent reservation in jobs and education for the community besides increased political representation at the state and central levels. It was held over a month after many community members blocked the Jaipur-Agra highway in Bharatpur. This highway blockade had marked their second protest within the last one year over their quota demand, which was again called off after talks with the Gehlot administration.It was this perceived discontent among Malis that the BJP leaders hoped to capitalise on at the Mali Mahasangam in the run-up to the state Assembly polls, slated for December, that apparently backfired.Sources in the Mali community said, “The event was indeed organised by the community, but the audience started getting restive and uneasy after seeing BJP leaders making a pitch about their party.”Among the BJP leaders present at the event were, besides Maurya, Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla, Rajya Sabha MP Rajendra Gehlot, former minister Prabhu Lal Saini and MLA Avinash Gehlot.In his address to the gathering, Rajendra Gehlot – who hails from Jodhpur, the CM’s home turf, and has contested, unsuccessfully, the Assembly polls against Gehlot – charged that the Congress leaders, Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi, had “denied” reservation to the OBC communities.In a crucial state like UP, the BJP has successfully managed to forge a vote bank of non-dominant OBCs similar to Rajasthan’s Mali and related communities.“Please, it has been enough. You are talking about Ashok Gehlot ji. He is our idol too. Since he is our idol, please don’t tarnish his image,” former BJP minister Prabhu Lal Saini told the audience as it burst into raising the slogan, “Ashok Gehlot zindabad”. There was little effect of Saini’s request on them.By the time Maurya started his speech and mentioned that the BJP is the world’s largest political party, the crowd roared back with pro-Gehlot slogans.Despite repeated pleas by the organisers and Maurya’s appeal for maintaining the community’s unity, many in the gathering continued to wave Gehlot’s posters and chant slogans in his favour.Gehlot, who is also dubbed “jaadugar (magician)” given his background as his father was a professional magician, has often said publicly that it was nothing short of “magic” that despite not belonging to a dominant caste group, he could become the CM thrice in the midst of Rajasthan’s caste-driven politics.While the CM did not attend the Mali Mahasangam, his son Vaibhav Gehlot, who is also the president of the Rajasthan Cricket Association (RCA), was present on the stage when the crowd cheered for his father while interrupting the BJP leaders’ speeches.“It was with your blessings that Gehlot Sahab could become the CM for the third time,” Vaibhav told the audience to a loud applause.Vaibhav also highlighted Gehlot’s contribution in the development of the Mali community, including his “key role in the creation of the Mahatma Jyotiba Phule Rashtriya Sansthan to unite the Mali community of Rajasthan during his stint as the Union textile minister”.The communities such as Mali and Saini are thinly spread across the state, but unlike the dominant OBC groups such as Jats, they do not have large concentrations in multiple Assembly constituencies, which scupper their chances of securing Assembly tickets from major parties, which mostly field candidates from dominant castes.

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